


Tranquil As A Noun

by InkedQuill (JunellaNyx)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Control Issues, Dark!Solas, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Madness, Power changes people, Self-Harm, Tranquil, Twisted love, thought experiment, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-21 22:23:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3706223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JunellaNyx/pseuds/InkedQuill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He left for the final campaign one wintry afternoon. She was present to see him off, if only because she was expected to be. He had cupped her face in her hands and pressed a kiss to the vallaslin he had tattooed on her brow. 'I will come back,' he whispered. 'Wait for me.'</p><p>She inclined her head, to hide the surge of hatred and disgust his words brought. What else could she do but wait? A husk of an erstwhile organisation, reduced to naught but a pretty toy.</p><p>--<br/>Solas, now openly known as Fen'harel, has conquered all of Thedas and crushed the human race in vengeance. Thedas is now ruled by elves, with humans kept as slaves, and Fen'harel revered as a saviour. He claims the Inquisitor as his prize.</p><p>She, stripped of all that she was, refuses to yield.</p><p>Inspired by dark!Solas prompts on the Dragon Age Kink Meme, anoneventuality's His series and the spark of an idea I had while on the verge of falling asleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tranquil As A Noun

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Pet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3538418) by [anoneventuality](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoneventuality/pseuds/anoneventuality). 



> So...I was replaying Cassandra's early conversations with the Inquisitor in my head on the Vigil all Seekers go through to unlock their powers, and the seed for this fic came to me. I wrote most of this on my phone between 3am to 5am on a worknight (such priorities I have), and spent two weeks editing, analysing and wrestling with myself over putting it here. 
> 
> The rest is headcanon inspired by the lovely Azzandra's wonderful Solas/Female Trevelyan fics , anoneventuality's His series, the Dragon Age Kink Meme and my fascination with Solas. I write in British English, so expect the odd 'u' in places you may not be used to seeing it ;)
> 
> I hope you enjoy my first sojourn into the Dragon Age fandom :)

He left for the final campaign one wintry afternoon. She was present to see him off, if only because she was expected to be. He had cupped her face in her hands and pressed a kiss to the vallaslin on her brow. 'I will come back,' he whispered. 'Wait for me.'

She inclined her head, to hide the surge of hatred and disgust his words brought. What else could she do but wait? A husk of an erstwhile organisation, reduced to naught but a pretty toy. 

She supposed he looked very handsome in his armour, but she took no pleasure in that observation as she watched him ride out with his army. When the trot of hooves, and jangling of weapons and buckles finally ceased, she went inside, shrugging off the thin robe and donning a much thicker one. The small rebellion made her heave a sigh of relief, and she derived no small amount of satisfaction from the fact her handmaiden could not protest, with the standing instruction to 'let Her Worship do as she will'. 

The weeks and months without him lay ahead, brighter without the constant threat of his shadow falling over her. She looked forward to mornings of waking up when she pleased, without a hand undoing the clasps of her meagre clothing with lascivious intent, and evenings of reading till she dozed off with no danger of waking to unwelcome touches.

Yes. She would rest, and regroup. She must use the respite of his absence well. She must never yield.

  
\---  


It appeared that control of anything she could call hers - precious few things at that- was not to be.

Left to her own devices, she could feel madness creep in. Inch by inch, insidious in its invasion. Not demons, no, no self respecting demon would go near her, with her skin branded thusly. Irrational impulses, inexplicable ups and downs in her moods sparked by the most minute of things, sudden destructive rages. Even the servants learned to steer clear of her the fourth time she wrecked the gardens she had so painstakingly nurtured, just because.

She found it profoundly ironic, that resistance of his manipulations had delayed the effects of her entrapment. Cause and effect, feeding into each other like a fucked-up ouroburos.

As she lay on her corner of Fen'harel's bed, blessedly empty of his presence, a wisp of memory came to her, scraps of conversations she had with Cassandra. Dear, dear Cassandra, who had fallen in her defence.

' _...fasting, prayer, and separation from all distractions - including other people._ '

' _...empty ourselves of all emotion..._ '

She bolted upright in bed, and for the first time in a year, laughed aloud, the sound of it reedy and thin from disuse. The noise brought her handmaiden running, but she didn't care.

 _I can be free_.

  
\---  


The palace gates rose into sight, and Fen'harel heaved a sigh he did not know he held. Behind him, a murmur began among his men, their hearts gladdened by home within reach. It had been a long wearying campaign, dismantling the last bastions of human resistance.

He endured the fanfare and the ceremonial welcomes of his household with ill grace, his eyes searching for the one face he wanted to see. He found her, staying well back from the press of bodies in the shadow of a pavillion. 

He wished she was standing in the light before him, so he could trace the lines of her face, made even more beautiful by the lines of her vallaslin. He had designed them for her and etched them into her skin with his own hands, whorls and curlicues that feathered along her regal cheekbones and emphasised her large cat-like eyes. A shiver of anticipation and arousal trickled through him when their eyes met. 

She inclined her head, and vanished into the crowd.

He rushed through the debriefing of his council, eager to escape into the sanctuary of his quarters for a bath, and his reunion with Trevelyan.

When he finally managed to get away, the hot bath he had ordered drawn was in his chambers, but she was not. Instead, her handmaiden stood by the doors with her shoulders hunched, hands behind her back. 

He chuckled indulgently. 'Is she being difficult?'

The tiny girl shuffled her feet. 'Not exactly, my lord.' 

He waited, and made an impatient noise in his throat when she remained silent.

She finally lifted her head, and he read uneasiness in her eyes. His ardour cooled. 'What is it?' he demanded, apprehension sharpening his voice. 'What's happened to her?'

The girl produced a leather-bound journal, handing it to him with shaking hands. 'She instructed me to show this to you when you returned, my lord...before she changed. Her Worship has not been herself for months.'

  
\--  


She looked up from her book when he burst into the study. 'Greetings.'

'Yes.' He crossed the room to her side, lifting her chin to better see her face. She did not resist, placidly allowing him to tilt her head this way and that. 'Your maid came, spouting the strangest things. Have you been behaving?'

'I am well.'

'So I see. Have you been eating?'

'When it is needed, yes.'

He paused in his examination, a niggling sense of disquiet nagging at the back of his mind. 'Have you found new ways to hurt yourself?'

'That would be impossible, given the nature of the blood writing.'

He crouched to look her in the eye, and took a step back. Her eyes were empty, chips of coloured glass that looked more at home on a doll's porcelain face. 

_What has she done?_ Gut churning with unease, he fled the library. Back in his bedchamber, he snatched up the journal and began leafing through the pages. The first few were filled with scribbles and equations, bits of magical theory. He spared them a cursory glance, enough to understand she was extrapolating on spirit magic. As he progressed through the volume, the writings began , long harsh strokes that ripped through the thick parchment at times. Select words were repeated, circled, underlined in no coherent fashion.

Abruptly the scrawls ceased. The following pages appeared to be empty. Perplexed, he flipped to the end of the journal, and discovered a folded piece of parchment, tucked into a slit in the cover.

Easing it out, he smoothed out the creases. There was her handwriting, feminine and elegant.

  


_I have instructed Maeve to hand this to you. I see she has obeyed me, for once._

_I have been very busy in your absence, Dread Wolf. The garden requires tending, despite my senseless destruction of it. And there is the matter of what I should do, with so much time on my hands._

_Plotting an escape is out of the question, for obvious reasons. You would well know about that, wouldn't you?_

_You see, you can leash a wild thing with all the restraints you can think of, and that does not tame it. Instead, it's a restrained wild thing. It is angry, pacing the confines of its gilded cage. A wild thing will seek to escape, however it can._

_I have found a way to escape. One that skirts the geas of the blood writing and leaves no mark. I refuse to be your plaything for the rest of my life. I will not lose my sanity because of you._

_I have made myself Tranquil._

_Perhaps I end up just as you intended, a broken creature you can animate to your will. But this is on my own terms and my will, not yours._

_Do what you want with me. This body's yours, after all the marking and violating you've done to it. Exactly what you wanted, isn't it?_

_I hope some lucky bastard gets in a fatal shot at you one day. It's the least you deserve._

  


The parchment fell from numb fingers. He gasped for air, his armour too tight, too constricting for the great heaving breaths his chest struggled for. _Tranquil. Cut off from the Fade. Barely more than a walking corpse._

The door clicked open. She slipped in, robes rustling. 'You have read my letter.'

'Yes.' he buried his face in his hands, hearing his voice crack like all the dreams he had secretly harboured in his heart. Of a daughter with her clear eyes and sweetly curved lips, a son with her wavy hair and quick, mischievous grin. Of nights of reading together, his head in her lap. Of affection, companionship and laughter he would teach her to love. 'Why?'

'You know the answer to that, Dread Wolf.'

He clenched his fists and fade-stepped across the room to stand before her. She regarded his sudden approach with nary a flicker of reaction.

'I would—' he mastered himself, swallowing hard. 'Evelyn. _Vhenan_. I would have given you the world.'

'You are well aware of what I wanted, Fen'harel, the one thing you would not give. It pleased you to withhold my freedom, did it not? To have Evelyn Trevelyan, Inquisitor, seated at the foot of your throne with a leash you held? To have every inch of her under your power?'

He seized her hands, holding them too tightly in his frenzy of emotion. 'You would have learned to love it, in time. We could have been happy, Evelyn. _So happy._ '

'Your happiness would not have been mine.'

'You would have wanted for nothing else, darling. I can reverse this. My spirit friends can—' 

'You do not understand. You repulsed me, Dread Wolf, although I cannot remember why. I despised you.'

He stared at her, speechless at the disconnect between cutting words and smooth brow. There was nothing worse, he decided, than to hear the emotionless delivery of words he could imagine her spitting, dripping with venom. He would take all the insults she had to fling at him, all the hatred and the disgust, if only to hear her voice speak in anything but that monotone.

 _She did fight back in the early days, remember?_ a voice in his head whispered. _You punished her for it. You snuffed out that fire with your own hands, old wolf, and now you want it back?_

She wiggled her hands out of his, evading his attempts to heal the marks he had caused. 

He forced himself to respect the space she put between them.

She turned her hands over, observing the finger shaped bruises with a clinical curiosity that made his skin crawl. 'Perhaps,' she said slowly, folding her hands into her sleeves. 'Perhaps the woman I was would have loved Solas, if none of these had happened. I was a little bit in love with him. My memories tell me it was likely. You, Fen'harel, do not love Evelyn Trevelyan. You care nothing for what she wants. You only adore the idea of having her, pliant to your every whim.'

He opened his mouth to fire off a defence. He wanted to remind her of the indignities he had spared her from, of the silks, gowns and books he indulged her with. 

Then his mind recalled the times she turned away from him or scrunched her eyes shut when he touched her. Maidenly modesty, he had told himself, silencing the inner voice that questioned how she lay beneath him, stonily passive, as he moved within her. He had taken such pride in wrenching orgasms from her body, symbolic of his power over her . Whenever he accosted her in the library or the study, pressing his hardness against her bottom, she would still, muscles tensing before she deliberately relaxed - unresisting, but not yielding, either. 

Before...

_She pressed a vial of lyrium into his hand as he stood, breathless with exertion. Her fingers brushed a cut on his cheek, the injury tingling before her magic banished all trace of it. She thanked him for the barrier that saved her from a Behemoth's nasty swing, her body pressing against his side as she caught him up in a brief hug._

_Her lips twitched as he related a story of a Fade memory he'd encountered. He paused, arching a brow in silent query. She reached up and scrubbed at his chin with her sleeve. The fabric came away, spotted with a smudge of yellow paint. He blinked in understanding, and the corners of her eyes crinkled in mirth._

_She placed a box on the desk before him, uncharacteristically shy. He recognised the emblem on the lid as that of a renowned Orlesian patisserie and caught her hand, touched by her remembrance of a throwaway comment he made. 'Thank you', he murmured. She smiled and squeezed his fingers before slipping away._

Before.

Before he claimed her as his.

The truth he had denied for so long sank in. She was, sadly, irrevocably right. So right that the weight of the truth sent him to his knees.

She turned away.

In the suffocating silence, he listened to the familiar cadence of her footsteps and the swish of her robes, receding with every step she took, away from him. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> I'm not entirely sure I captured Solas's voice — he's a tough nut to crack. Tranquil voices are also hella hard to write.
> 
> I'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas and constructive criticisms you have.


End file.
